Question

posted by mikemercury
2 years ago
facebook post area when clicked gives https://www.facebook.com/ajax/metacomposer/attachment/status/status.php?targetid=695296250&xhpc=composerTourStart

This is when you click the "whats on your mind" box. Started happening yesterday. Works OK on IE. Scanned page source and found composerTourStart on firefox but not IE. COMPLETELY deleted firefox, saving and restoring only bookmarks. ALL plugins and extensions are disabled. Same thing. I see this exact problem reported a lot, but on Chrome.

Also, the buttons for friend requests/messages/ all clear the number and do nothing. Both started happening at the same time.

Firefox 14.0.1, XP SP3

I put what I think is the area causing the message from the Page Source area.

done clearing all that any number of times. Including deleting and reinstalling firefox 14.0.1 to a new folder and deleting the profiles.
interestingly, when I "remove all cookies", they still stay there even though the screen goes blank when I do it. If I look again, there they are...

Some cookies don't delete.... facebook.com did, but fastclick.net did not. They appear to delete, but when you show cookies again, they're still there. Deleting all facebook cookies did not help. have cleared cache and deleted files many times.

I believe fastclick.net is an advertising site. If you use an add-on that opts you out of tracking for advertising sites, you may be seeing an opt-out cookie rather than a tracking cookie. But we could take that up in a different thread.

I check all cookies and block a lot.I don't block any facebook cookies. But it was never a problem till yesterday after 3 1/2 years. I click the update status box and that link I printed in the question replaces the facebook screen in the URL bar, blank screen, with absolutely nothing in the page source. The other cookie issue is definitely for another day, but thought I'd mention it just in case. I removed all the blocks and it still doesn't work. Guess it's going to be FB and IE from now on....

Would you want to test one other thing? You could try the new Reset feature. This duplicates certain key data from your active settings folder into a new one, bypassing some add-ons and custom settings.

If the new settings folder has the same problem, you can switch back using Firefox's Profile Manager. (This article describes how to start Firefox in the profile manager. I do not recommend removing anything until you are 110% certain that you will never need any of that profile's data in the future. Use the Profile Manager to create and remove Firefox profiles)

If the new settings folder works, an extension or custom setting or corrupted file would be the prime suspect.

I've been having the exact same problem for the same length of time. Facebook works normally in IE and Chrome. Somethign I also noticed is that the dropdown menus aren't working properly on Facebook in Firefox. For example, I should be able to click the world icon to drop down a list of notifications. Nothing happens when I click. None of the parts of the Firefox page with dropdown menus seem to be working. In addition to trying everything described above I also reinstalled Flash via Firefox. No help. Could this be something tied into the Windows Updates that came out Tuesday?

No, Ailos. I just put the monthly windows fixes up this morning and the problem started yesterday afternoon.

"Good" to hear that others are having the same problem. My other PC with windows 7 and 14.0.1 works fine. This was reported last year, but only in Chrome. Maybe one of them will fix it....

Going to try Reset. I have to say, Firefox 14 was problematic. I had set automatic install on on a number of customers, and five of them had problems like settings lost, repeated crashes starting firefox, toolbars all turned off. Manual install would crash or hang, took 3 times on one computer.

I had the same problem, jscher2000. it was all related and dropdowns work also. .I mentioned it in the original post but probably didn't make it clear. I've had problems with private messages for a while, and this took care of that too.

I have the same problem since a few days. But I think have found the cause.

Suddenly it started a few days ago that I couldn't like anything on facebook and some other weird problems as reported here when you click in the post area for example.

After days of deleting all add-ons, running on safe-mode, etc., I sadly clicked on RESET as described above. The problems were gone and I started to reinstall all my add-ons. While doing this I checked facebook after every add-on I installed. Everything was fine. Then I made all other settings to firefox and all add-ons and went back to work.

About 15 minutes ago I wanted to check something on facebook, but the problem was back again.

So I checked every single setting, and today I think I discovered what the problem is.

I set "Keep until" to "ask me every time" because I want to control who is saving cookies on my system.

When I change the setting to "they expire" or "I close firefox" then facebook works without any problems.

When I change it back to "ask me every time" then the problems are back.

Now I wonder if this might be a bug of firefox?

@mikemercury: You wrote "I check all cookies and block a lot." so I assume that you have also set your cookie settings to "ask me every time". Could you please try if the problem is solved when you change your option? Thanks.

A reset solved for me as well. Sadly I forgot to backup my home page links. As dino suggests, I'll watch to see if the problem returns. I hadn't made any setting changes to my Firefox in a very, very long time so if it is a problem with a cookie setting how did it get changed? Or maybe it was set that way for a very long time and facebook or Firefox changed something that caused a conflict? Maybe rebooting my computer for Windows Update, in other words closing and reopening Firefox caused Firefox to run an update if its own that created the problem to go into effect?

I just restarted my work PC (FF 14.0.1, XP SP3) after installing the latest XP updates and everything is still OK with Facebook... My cookie settings are "Ask me every time" as they were before, so it doesn't appear that it's the cause.

I also noticed that on the PC with the non-functioning Facebook doesn't allow you to log off via the down arrow menu in the upper right corner...

Hi ailios, if you used the Reset feature under Help > Troubleshooting Information, your old settings folder (AKA Firefox profile folder) was preserved and you can mine it for settings and other information. The following article may help. If you have questions about how to work with the files, it probably makes sense to start a new thread.

Hi mikemercury, I'm glad you got it solved. Sorry it took 12 hours to get there, and we need to give thanks to the user detective in the other thread who discovered the connection with the "ask me every time" cookie setting.

Every time I clicked on the FB "Post Update" the FB page would close and it would re-direct to a composer page. I noticed that the address was "ajax/metacomposer/attachment", did a search in Windows (C:\) and found a file called "ajaxupload" in the temp internet folder. I deleted all the files in the temp internet folder and the problem was solved.
As a matter of interest I also went through the process of removing (even in the registry) and reinstalling Firefox, which did not solve the problem.

No. its back again. you are right Dino, it is related to that ask me every time option. But I want that option on. Now have to look at that issue. I forgot that the reset changed that option back. Today I noticed it wasn't on, turned it on, and the option came right back. Reset. OK. Changed option. Boom. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I have had this option on for years and have NEVER had any problem unless I got a message that cookies were turned off.

Yes, I did jscher. That is the real fix, not the 50 or other things I tried. I thought the reset did it, but that got rid of ask every time which I didn't notice right away. In fact I reposted this topic as a new question with the facebook.com cookie name as an exception to keep other folks from having to go through all the changes some of us did. Thanks!

No, exclamation points aside, the solution is whatever works. dino.mueller's fix worked for me. I prefer not to add an exception for facebook.com. "When Firefox closes" is a perfectly adequate cookie setting for me. YMMV.

Holy Moley! I've been going nuts with this Facebook problem for weeks, and your suggestion to change how cookies are responded to fixed it instantly! I just changed the Firefox setting to "Accept Third Party Until I Close" and I can post again! Still not sure what caused this problem suddenly, but thanks so much for the fix! Kinko's will wonder where the business went!!